Agreement to these terms
Welcome to Approvalane, a product of Nova Stack Systems ("Approvalane", "we", "us"). These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the Approvalane platform — including your workspace, branded portals, project tools, messaging, payments features and every related service. By creating an account or using Approvalane you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you are accepting on behalf of a company, you confirm you have the authority to bind that company.
What Approvalane is
Approvalane is a collaboration platform where business owners run software projects with the developers they hire. It covers client intake and lead management, proposals with electronic acceptance, project and milestone management, task boards, reviews and approvals, calendars and meeting scheduling, document exchange, real-time messaging, time tracking and timesheets, invoicing, escrow-style payment workflows, payouts, a scoped work portal for the people you hire, integrations and a public API, notifications, a help centre and support threads, data export, and AI-assisted tooling.
Approvalane is the venue and the toolset — we are not a party to the contracts between you and the people you work with, and we do not supply, vet, employ or guarantee anyone you find, invite or hire.
Accounts & workspaces
- You must provide accurate account information and keep your credentials secure. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account.
- A workspace is your company's container on Approvalane. The workspace owner controls its branding, membership, plan and billing.
- Depending on your plan you may run more than one workspace from a single login, each with its own branding, members and portal. Each workspace is billed and limited separately, and data never crosses between them.
- Invited members (for example developers joining through a magic link) get access scoped to what the workspace shares with them — and nothing more.
- Magic links are personal, single-use sign-in credentials. Do not forward them.
Subscriptions & billing
- Paid plans (Launch, Momentum, Summit) are billed per workspace, monthly or yearly. Yearly plans are billed up front at a discounted rate.
- We never auto-charge. Plans run for the period you paid for and stop unless you renew. Reminders are sent before a period ends.
- Mid-cycle upgrades are prorated: you pay only the difference for the days remaining. Downgrades take effect at the end of the paid period. Cancelling keeps your plan active until the period ends.
- Card payments are processed by Stripe; Approvalane never stores full card numbers. Fees are non-refundable except where required by law or expressly stated.
- If your plan lapses, your data stays safe but gated modules pause until you reactivate.
Payments between you and your developers
- Invoice, escrow-style funding and payout features move money between workspace members. Amounts you fund are committed to the project and released when you approve the work, per the flows shown in the product.
- Clients pay by card on the workspace's own branded checkout page. Card details go straight to Stripe — they never touch our servers.
- Approvalane charges a platform fee on money released through the product. The current percentage is shown in the product before you release, and it is taken at release, not at funding.
- You are responsible for the commercial terms, scope and quality expectations you agree with the people you hire. Approvalane records the trail (submissions, approvals, checksums, timelines) but does not arbitrate contracts.
- Where a milestone is disputed, funds stay held until the dispute closes. If a cardholder raises a chargeback with their bank, the related invoice is frozen while the bank decides — the outcome is the bank's, not ours.
- Refunds of escrow still held are returned to whoever funded it. Money already released can only be recovered from the recipient's balance, which may leave that balance negative until it is settled.
- Taxes on amounts you pay or receive through Approvalane are your responsibility. We do not withhold, file or advise on tax.
Getting paid: payouts & connected accounts
- To receive money you may be asked to complete Stripe onboarding and hold a Stripe-connected account. Stripe collects and verifies your identity and bank details directly under Stripe's own agreement — we never see or store those documents, and Stripe decides whether your account may receive payouts.
- When a connected account is active, approved work pays out to it automatically after release. If Stripe declines, restricts or delays an account, the payout waits — that decision is Stripe's.
- Where automatic payout is unavailable, a manual payout request rail is provided instead. Requests may be subject to a minimum amount and a clearing period before recently received money becomes withdrawable; both are shown in the product.
- Requesting a payout holds the amount immediately so it cannot be spent twice. A declined request returns the held amount to your available balance.
- Approvalane is not a bank and does not provide banking, lending, escrow or money-transmission services in its own right. Balances shown in the product are records of amounts held for you through our payment provider, and they earn no interest.
Public pages, proposals & share links
- Your workspace can publish pages on its branded domain that anyone can reach: an intake form, a booking page, proposals you send to prospects, and document share links. What you publish there, and how you use the enquiries it brings in, is your responsibility.
- People who submit your intake form, request a booking or respond to a proposal are not creating Approvalane accounts. Their submissions are delivered into your workspace as your records — you are responsible for handling that data lawfully (see our Privacy Policy).
- When a prospect accepts a proposal, Approvalane records the typed name, timestamp, network address and a fingerprint of the exact content accepted. That record is an electronic acceptance between you and the prospect — Approvalane stores the evidence but is not a party to the resulting agreement, and does not warrant its enforceability in any particular jurisdiction.
- A document share link lets anyone who holds the link download the file until the link expires or you revoke it. Share carefully; you remain responsible for what you share and with whom.
- Public pages carry abuse protections (rate limits, expiring tokens), but you must not use them to collect data deceptively or for any purpose outside section 10 (Acceptable use).
Integrations, API keys & webhooks
- You can connect your Google Calendar so confirmed meetings appear in it and your existing commitments block your bookable slots. You grant that access yourself and can revoke it at any time, from Approvalane or from your Google account. Your use of Google's service stays governed by your agreement with Google.
- Calendar sync is best-effort: if Google refuses our access we stop syncing, remove the busy times we can no longer verify, and tell you to reconnect. Until you do, your booking page may offer a time your own calendar has taken. Confirming a booking is always your decision to make.
- API keys act on behalf of your workspace and carry its access. The full key is shown once, at creation — store it safely, and revoke it the moment it might be exposed. Anything done with a valid key is treated as done by you.
- Webhooks send your workspace's data to endpoints you configure, including third-party services such as Zapier. Once data leaves for an endpoint you chose, its handling is between you and that service. Endpoints that keep failing are disabled automatically so we are not delivering into the dark.
- Fair use applies: do not poll the API abusively, work around rate limits, or use integrations to bulk-extract another workspace's data. We may throttle or revoke access that threatens the platform's stability.
Your content
You own the content you upload or collect — briefs, files, messages, deliverables, proposals and the enquiries your public pages bring in. You grant us a limited licence to host, process, display and transmit that content solely to operate the service (for example storing files, rendering previews, delivering messages in real time, serving your public pages, syncing a meeting to a calendar you connected, generating AI summaries you request). We claim no other rights to it. You can export your own records as CSV from inside the product at any time.
Acceptable use
- No unlawful, infringing or fraudulent activity, and no uploading of malicious code or executables designed to harm others.
- No attempts to breach or probe another workspace's data, bypass plan limits, or interfere with the service's operation.
- No abusive, harassing or deceptive behaviour toward other users — including the people you hire and the prospects who contact you.
- No using payment features to move money unrelated to work done through the platform.
- We may suspend accounts that put the platform or its users at risk; where reasonable, we will warn you first.
AI features
Some features use large language models to draft, summarise or explain content (for example milestone suggestions, chat polish, hand-off notes, invoice explanations and the workspace copilot). AI output can be wrong — review it before relying on it, and never treat it as legal, tax or financial advice. AI features are always something you invoke; content sent to them is processed only to produce your result and is governed by our Privacy Policy.
Notifications & communications
- Some email is part of the service and cannot be switched off — sign-in links, invoices and receipts, payout and dispute notices, plan reminders and security alerts.
- Real-time alerts, and push notifications on your phone or desktop, are opt-in per browser and revocable at any time. You control quiet hours and can mute individual projects.
- Marketing email is opt-in only, and every marketing message carries a working unsubscribe link.
Availability & changes
We work hard to keep Approvalane fast and available, but the service is provided "as is" without uptime guarantees on self-serve plans. Features that depend on someone else's service — card payments, payouts, calendar sync, email delivery, push delivery, AI — can be interrupted by that provider. We may improve, change or discontinue features; if a change materially reduces what you paid for, we will tell you in advance.
Termination
You can stop using Approvalane and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms. On termination, provisions that by their nature should survive (content licences already exercised, payment obligations, liability limits) survive. Export what you need before you delete a workspace — deletion is permanent.
Disclaimers & limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Approvalane and its team are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, loss of profits, loss of data caused by third parties, or disputes between workspace members. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.
Changes to these terms
We may update these Terms as the product evolves. For material changes we will notify you inside the product or by email before they take effect. Continuing to use Approvalane after changes take effect means you accept them.
Contact
Questions about these Terms? Write to support@approvalane.com — a human reads every message.